This invention relates generally to the field of aerosolizing a powder pharmaceutical formulation, such as a dry powder drug and/or vaccine.
The need for effective therapeutic treatment of patients has resulted in the development of a variety of techniques for delivering a pharmaceutical formulation to a patient. Traditional techniques for delivering a pharmaceutical formulation involve, needle injection and oral delivery in the form of a pill, capsule, or the like. Inhaleable drug delivery, where an aerosolized pharmaceutical formulation is orally or nasally inhaled by a patient to deliver the formulation to the patient's respiratory tract, has also proven to be an effective manner of delivery. In one inhalation technique, a pharmaceutical formulation is delivered deep within a patient's lungs where it may be absorbed into the blood stream. Many types of inhalation devices exist including devices that aerosolize a dry powder pharmaceutical formulation. However, these devices are often cumbersome and/or are difficult or costly to manufacture and/or are inadequate at delivering the pharmaceutical formulation.
Pulmonary delivery has been shown to be a particularly promising pharmaceutical formulation delivery technique for certain therapies. For example, the delivery of proteins and polypeptides, which can be difficult to deliver by other routes of administration, can be effectively delivered by inhalation. Such pulmonary delivery is effective both for systemic delivery and for localized delivery to treat diseases of the lungs. In addition, pulmonary delivery of some vaccines has been shown to be more effective than needle injection. This is believed to be due to this technique conferring mucosal as well as systemic immunity. For example, inhaled measles vaccines have been successfully administered to millions of Mexican and thousands of South African children safely and more effectively than injected vaccines.
Therefore, it is desirable to be able to offer the benefits of pulmonary delivery without the need of a cumbersome, expensive, and/or inefficient device. It is further desirable to be able to provide an aerosolization device that is simple and efficient to make and/or operate.